Adapting to the pandemic – Revoluton Arts
05/23/2021
Learn how Revoluton Arts evolved into a Community Interest Company (CIC) and adapted from live to online events during lockdown. And, see how we supported them following these changes.
About Revoluton Arts
Revoluton Arts is a people-powered project on a mission to cultivate grassroots creativity in Luton. The organisation brings art into the heart of communities in the town. It puts on big, high-quality creative events and runs theatre and music workshops, open mic events and much more.
The project launched in 2015, starting off as an Arts Council England funded programme. Now, six years later, the programme has evolved into a Community Interest Company (CIC).
Helping to insure CIC activities and events
As the organisation grew and changed, we supported the Revoluton Arts team to find the best insurance cover for their activities. The organisation had to quickly adapt to providing online events during lockdown, and it was at that time we were approached to provide insurance which accommodated their needs and gave them the flexibility they required.
We spoke to Jenny Williams and Jo Hudson-Lett about how Revoluton adapted to lockdown and how shifting to digital expanded their reach.
Watch Revoluton Arts’ pandemic story and read on for more detail.
Lockdown – March 2020
“I got a phone call from Jenny saying, ‘just go home’. And from that moment, everything changed. 2020 was a really challenging year. It drove so much change and fast-forwarded our work in a way we could never have imagined. We never thought we would be able to engage with people and communities online.
At our first remote team meeting, Jenny said ‘right, how are we going to deliver our work online?’. It was really scary. We couldn’t imagine how it would work. All our usual things were in person. There were lots of ‘how do we…’ questions! There were no known solutions. We weren’t very tech savvy.
We had to look at what we already did and translate that into a screen form.
We needed to be agile. We needed to change our business model and we needed to do it quickly. Now, 12 months later, we’re a totally different organisation. We deliver everything virtually. People came out of the woodwork to help us. It’s been tough but we have thrived.”
A year on…
“We have evolved into a CIC. We have a digital presence and have connected with people we would never have reached before. We’ve run workshops with large groups, we’ve hosted Friday night music nights on Facebook with huge numbers, we’ve supported people to learn new skills who would never have come out to in-person lessons. For example, we distributed over 60 ukuleles to people around Luton and ran sessions on Zoom for young carers and people with disabilities.
We had feedback that doing it this way felt more personal – we got to know each other better, we were in each other’s homes through Zoom. We reached people outside our area too.
This year has also taught us that we don’t need the office space, so we’re planning to knock our office walls down and create a hub for young people instead.
As a small team we have had to rely on each other. Covid pushed us forward. Our plan was always that the young people would help us to run Revoluton. But this year, that has accelerated, it’s propelled us a year ahead of where we thought we would be because of how we’ve all pulled together. Their response was ‘what do you need us to do?’. It was great, they were just onboard. Ready. Without them we wouldn’t have fast-forwarded.”
Working with the community
“It’s always been our way to use the skills and energy of the community to do what we do. This has been in evidence even more this year. When lockdown started, we had a lot of meetings involving people from other organisations and our community. Everyone worked together to work out what we could do. Within the month we launched a 12-week programme of events that reached thousands of people.
The skills we have in-house to run big live events were quite different to what we needed to run a digital programme. All our processes, risk assessments and procedures had to change. We had to look for advice and work out where we needed to develop new skills. We called on our Young Digital Associates for their support.
Pre-Covid, we delivered a digital bootcamp for young people. We sent them to big events to put their skills in action by doing a social media takeover for us. This year their skills have been invaluable. They stood next to us and worked on our programming and became our technical hosts. We have now made a commitment that they will get a 6-month commission from us, giving them work experience in the arts.”
Following the online programme, Revoluton Arts conducted an impact report to review the success of their initiatives. “We have learnt lessons about the advantages of technology, the opportunities it brings to reach people – communities and audiences – in ways we would never have dreamed of. It’s just so exciting!”
Support from Zurich - Insurance cover for digital events
“We needed help from Zurich about updating our cover as we were moving from live to digital events. We were also looking to move from being a project to being a CIC. This was all changing quite quickly. Zurich really helped. They understood that we were needing to adapt and change rapidly. This helped us to be able to move at that speed. We were able to let our directors know that we had sorted out all the right cover to be able to deliver our work. We knew other arts organisations were using Zurich because they know and understand our industry. It was an easy choice.”
See how another of our not-for-profit customers, Largo Communities Together, adapted to the pandemic.
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